It's Liette here writing the blog today.

Great news!  The sponsor letters and photos for the 2015-2016 academic year are done!  Yay!  Thanks to a great team, we have gotten 99% of the children done and the letters/photos sent out to sponsors.  Heather kept the kids busy colouring, crafting and playing.  Keith took & labelled photos and scanned and labelled letters. Joan helped with herding children, letter writing & translating.  If you have not yet received your sponsor child's photo/letter, please first check your Junk Mail, then drop me a line at liette.hatshaiti@outlook.com.  You may have to add me to your contacts to be sure my email will get to you.

Challenging news:  We have 16 more high school students needing sponsors.  If you are interested in sponsoring another student, we would love to hear from you.

More challenging news:  Due to the sinking Canadian dollar, your sponsorship donations are not going as far as they used to.  In order to continue to provide a high quality education to all of our students, a healthy hot meal each day and a living wage for our employees, we need to increase our sponsorship amounts for next year.  Beginning Jan 1 (or sooner if we can get the website up and running), you can make your donation either monthly by signing up with Paypal or yearly by one of the methods that has always been available.  As of Jan 1, 2016, elementary sponsorship will be $300 or $25 per month and secondary sponsorship will be $420 or $35 per month.  We don't want to cut services and we appreciate your incredible generosity in continuing to partner with us.

Today at the mission, the fun started out with a 10km hike up the mountain behind Deschapelles with a large group of excited kids.  Besides a couple of skinned knees, one briefly missing Josie (on the wrong side of a large scratchy bush) and a few thirsty children who didn't feel like carrying a water bottle, it was a wonderful time.

The afternoon brought a visit from Valerie, one of Karen's UN friends from Quebec and her two colleagues from France.  The kids enjoyed spending time with them, especially riding bikes with Valerie.

Our UN friend Valerie from Canada bike riding with our kids

Valerie with Judel, Jofky and Ti Luc

The little children are all tucked in their beds and the big ones soon will be too in preparation for church tomorrow.  One more day before we head home to cold and snow in Calgary!

Liette